Crypto market bottom is closer than you think as Bitcoin miner reserves crash to historic lows

Bitcoin’s price story lately has been told like it only has one main character, the ETFs. Money goes in, price goes up, money goes out, price goes down. It’s a clean narrative, and it’s not wrong, but it’s incomplete, because Bitcoin is not just a ticker. The network has its own internal plumbing, and some of the best clues about where we are in the cycle are sitting in plain sight on-chain. The charts I’ve been watching feel a bit like checking the pulse under the headline. Miners, long-term holders, and the broad mass of wallets don’t react the way ETFs do, they don’t flip direction on a whim, they grind, they hold, then they crack, then they recover. That is why I decided to check in on a few cycle gauges that have kept me honest across the years, miner reserves, NUPL, and the percentage of UTXOs in profit. Bitcoin miner reserves dwindle We'll start with miners, because miners are where the Bitcoin “real economy” meets the fiat world. They have bills to pay, they are constantly converting electricity into BTC, and when the math stops working they don’t get to be philosophical about it, they sell, they shut down, they restructure, they move, they hedge, they survive. In the data here, miner reserves are sliding to levels we haven’t seen since the early era. Miners currently hold about 1.801 million BTC. Bitcoin miner reserves have steadily declined from their early-cycle peak, even as price trends higher over the long term, underscoring a structural drawdown in miner-held supply. (Source: CryptoQuant) Over the last 60 days, they’ve shed roughly 6,300 BTC, just over 100 BTC per day on average. That is a steady leak, the kind you see when the business is under pressure, and the treasury becomes working capital. Bitcoin miner reserves continue to trend lower through 2024–2026, even as price experiences sharp rallies and pullbacks, highlighting persistent balance sheet pressure across the mining sector. (Source: CryptoQuant) In dollar terms, the picture gets more d...